For future usage mainly, since Maexxna's deathrattle was to crash the US/EU servers. Anyway seems pretty neat, most interesting thing so far is that the bosses respond to each of your emotes differently (Maexxna has several different hisses, other two both just say one thing in response to emotes and another in response to you either taking a while or board clearing), but if you just bumrush through the normal mode matches you can totally miss all of them except the greeting/death emote. The AI is still dumb but not as consistently dumb and evidently the heroic advantages outweigh the dumbness. The sound for clicking on the eggs is incredible.

Meanwhile: Hearthstone has 108,000 viewers on twitch, a mere 3000 less than League of Legends (obviously whenever the servers come back that'll go down slightly).

Edit: Apparently the tutorial has changed a bit in the past 10 months or whatever it is since the final beta reset, might be worth checking it out on the Asia server.

First boss defeated me the first time, then I was able to overcome.

Beat the second boss lady first try and then the game crashed on me (hopefully it saved my victory over her).

It's a pretty neat little package so far, I'm sure I'll end up paying the 20 bucks to unlock the rest of it.

Was able to get through the wing and class challenges before closing it to take a break.

Normal mode bosses weren't that hard and kind of fun. Class challenges were cool, being forced to play with the 1/4 gargoyles was cool. The Grand Widows hero ability could be an issue in Heroic.

I think I wana try and make some kinda buff paladin deck with the naxrums summon a guy cards and knife juggler.

Got a match in before the game crashed and was really liking it.
Was cool seeing new cards and hero ability, made it exciting, not knowing what kind of cards you're going up against.

Curious if Naxx cards are in arena yet if anyone knows? I'll try the free one in Asia in a while.

I really hope I don't have to re-do that Rogue challenge. That was just an un-fun deck to use.

I'm still waiting for my Necropolis to open. PC's been looking for the open switch for the past 15 minutes

Wow this is incredible laggy on iPad on right now. Fighting Anub-Rekhan now

I lost on my first try to the first boss with an aggro Warlock deck and then switched to my Shaman deck and won against all the bosses first try, only for the game to crash after beating Maexxna. Thought it was pretty enjoyable although the AI made some questionable decisions that may have in fact been a bug judging by how slow the game was going the longer I played.

Near the end of the match with the second boss, she had a bunch of minions (which I can't exactly remember) and I had a 6/2 chillwind, a 0/2 flametongue totem, and a 5/3 Windspeaker that gave windfury to the Chillwind Yeti. I attacked her twice with the Chillwind Yeti rather than sacrifice by defeating a minion bring her down from 30hp to 18hp and then ended my turn, she then did basically pointless moves I can't exactly remember and didn't even attack with her minions before ending her turn. That meant I could deal 17 damage to her directly and then I got to finish off with a Wolfrider. Probably a bug or maybe questionable AI not wanting to sacrifice minions if it not doing so won't exactly result in the their defeat. Maybe she attacked me but I can't exactly remember. Anyway, I hope to issues are solved soon so I can see if my progress actually saved and so I can try heroic mode. I also hope I didn't miss anything by beating that last boss, it seems many of the dialogue in Naxx happens once only.

The heroic stuff seems way too hard and not in a challenging fun way but in a this is dumb way.

@fredchuckdave: The patch notes said that they were all available in Arena

Is it just me or is the game completely unplayable at the moment? I'm having to wait 6 to 10 seconds between actions.

Game is lagging to a crippling level right now. I might chill out for a few hours before playing the rest.

@alkusanagi: Yeah, can't say I'm really surprised. It's the first big update for one of the most popular F2P games. Blizzard's servers are probably on fire.

@hunkulese: So like WoW then? Rad.

Except people can login

It's pretty fun. My biggest issue with Hearthstone is that the meta game feels really limited by the amount of viable decks you can make. It just makes for a really boring multiplayer game when you keep playing against people using the same exact cookie cutter decks. This on the other hand has been really enjoyable and fresh. The new cards are neat too I guess. I think this will pair nicely with arena for game modes I like in the game.

It seems pretty cool so far. I like the new bosses, cards and over all quirkyness of it. It does seem odd that the second and third bosses followed the rules of the game. What I mean is that the second boss was able to attack my hero despite me having a taunt on the field and the third boss was able to target my Fairy Dragon with it's hero power.

Blew through normal with an unmodified zoo, they don't run many taunts. Didn't try heroic yet, do they have different cards or just more health and better hero powers? Thinking about Healadin.

Just beasted the first two bosses before the servers apparently exploded again. Really good fun, no match for my gimmicky priest deck though!

My Mage secrets deck was garbage so I switched to my Mage Direct Damage/CC deck and destroyed all three bosses. Only lost to Anub once and that was with my secrets deck. Really good fun. Definitely be playing to do the challenges and heroic.

I'll get to trying out the Arachnid Quarter tomorrow when the servers are less on fire, and when I have a little more free time, but is this pretty much the takeaway?

I'm going to jump into Hearthstone the first time. Any advice? Should I touch this Naxxramas stuff? The blog post about it said you get the first wing for free if you step into it.

Beat all the bosses + class challenges on my first attempt, a bit disappointed with that tbh. The heroic challenges are somewhat more challenging but given the chance to actually play the game should beat them easily enough (Already done one before the servers crashed).

@aegon: Wait until tomorrow, Blizzard's servers are currently on fire.

@aegon: I would do all the practice tutorial stuff and play the game a little before jumping I to Naxxramas. At least till you have a few basic decks buitlt. The encounters are built around the idea that you'll need multiple types of decks to beat them.

Wrecked the first two dudes with a miracle rogue deck. Turns out the ai struggles with a turn 3 10/10 VanCleef =)

Lucked out and beat the first heroic boss on my first try, 45 health? 2 mana summon a 4/4 every turn? WTF.
It looks like the Heroic Spider boss is going to be practically impossible without a specialized deck. 0 MANA, RETURN 2 ENEMY CREATURES TO THEIR HAND, WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA.

Alexstraza > Heroic bosses.

Freeze Mage pooped on Anub and Maexxna.

Ye, actually beat the Heroic Anub on first try, but some of those cards they get... just stupid.

Oh man, why didn't I think of that? I do NOT have the dust to be crafting Alexstraza right now though after all my tightwad gold-saving antics. I was thinking of making a separate thread to post winning heroic mode decklists? Thoughts? (I got through anub' Rekhan with just a rush warlock, but the others will be tough)

Does it work if you only have one creature? Multishot/Cleave don't.

Rush decks should work well against Faerlina, at least. She kicked the crap out of my freeze Mage with her hero skill because having cards in your hand = bad. Ended up beating her with a taunt Druid deck.

Might work alright against Maexxna as long as you're putting out enough minions to bypass her webs.

With a freeze deck I just popped Maexxna's spiders to spawn a bunch of 1/1s. Eventually she just had seven 1 attack minions on the board and I just had to stall until Alexstrazsa.

From what I played of it so far it seems totally okay, not overwhelming or anything, but oh well.

I beat normal mode is easy enough. Got all the bosses on the first try with my Rogue.

Also beat the Druid challenge first try, because that deck doesn't even seem all that bad, but man then I tried the Rogue challenge. That's a really stupid deck with zero synergy and so I lost 7 times, until I got a lucky draw/spider got a bad draw.

And yes, heroic mode, is simply dumb. I love that the game warns you four or five times that "This is gonna be hard, unfair and not very fun." which pretty much translates to "Please don't shit all over us, because this is dumb. It's supposed to be dumb, really."

Only tried the first boss twice so far, with one of my existing decks, because I didn't have that much time on my hands, but this will take a lot of tries and specialized deck building anyway. (At least for me.)

Overall I'm looking forward to the rest of this expansion, even though most of the new cards seem rather weak.

@sessh: Beat both the class challenges on my first try, but I felt like the Rogue deck was the easier of the two. Squeaked by on the Druid deck (although I think I was drawing poorly for like 5 turns), but the Rogue deck seems built to directly counter Maexxna. I mean, it's 100% battlecries against a power that returns cards to your hand. It doubles the value of every card that she spits back.

I lost to the second boss once, mostly because I rely on having lots of cards in my hands... which is troublesome because her hero ability ends up causing like 7 damage per turn. Had to switch to aggressive murloc decks, they seem to not have much AOE/

@syz: Well, yes and no. Your are certainly correct, that the Rogue deck has all those battlecry dudes because of some semblance of balance for this fight, but the boss does have 2 cards that up the cost on all battlecry minions by 2 (or even 3 - can't remember exactly right now) and 2 sea giants, you simply can't counter with that deck. (Except if you are really lucky and draw the Big Game Hunter in that deck, but that's just pure change.)

So yeah, not that fun, if you don't draw really great early on. Also it just simply has a lot of useless cards, that don't play off each other. Murloc dude is just there to be funny and the Ooze is useless without any buffs.

Druid deck meanwhile has a lot of synergies, e.g. Nerubian Egg with buffs like Mark of the Wild.

I managed to log back in and do the class challenges on my first try before starting the heroic mode. I managed to beat the first heroic boss first try but haven't been able to get past the second heroic boss, that hero ability is just too strong for me. I hope that seeing as Blizzard encourages you to build new decks for the heroic bosses, they will add more deck slots at one point as I really want more deck slots than 9 at this stage especially as we get more naxx cards to play with. Also a little bummed there's no reward for doing all the heroic bosses but they still seem playing for the challenge.

I managed to beat the first 2 bosses on heroic, the first with a priest deck and the second wtih a zoo deck.

I clearly need to make a deck to beat the third because getting 2 minions sent back every turn sucks

Weren't you also suppose to be able to get gold from completing a wing? Or did I just dream that up.

@turambar: Games played in Naxx count toward your dailies, so you never have to play other people again I guess.

Edit: Turns out it's just the win 7 games quest, don't know why.

I'm currently really enjoying the adventure. I think the difficulty curve is perfect for each of the levels, and heroic isn't as hard if you really put your mind to building your deck. I didn't know these were coming out weekly, so that's completely awesome.

Also, was this first wing free? I clicked on the entry and it just let me in. Didn't get to read any text.

Do they? I won a few games playing a zoo warlock but don't remember seeing any dailies updates. Will check later.

There's actually quite a few ways to deal with heroic Maexxna, though Alexstrasza makes it way easier; double voodoo doctor is a must, and double earthen ring farseer can work pretty well too. Any charge card is good and any direct damage spells are good. The main thing you need is cards that you can burn so your hand doesn't overfill. Very cool boss.

My control warrior deck beat the other two on the first try.

I really like the class challenges. I feel like they could put out a bunch of those for all different kinds of decks so new players could get an idea how they might make and play a specific deck.

@fredchuckdave: I found that Mad Bomber and Mind Control Tech sorta abuses that AI. Ended up killing her with her own minions =D

It took a little trial and error - but was able to to knock out Anub'Rekhan with Shockadin, Faerlina with Zoo, and Maexna with Freeze Mage. I'd imagine Maexna would be pretty doable too if you mulligan properly for chargers early, LeeRoy from turn 4 on, and Farseer. Heroic was a nice challenge.

They don't for me.

@turambar: @starvinggamer: Maybe the first win does? I got credit for Total Dominance, hasn't been working for my other quests though.